Family Medicine Blog

Physicians practicing in small towns and rural areas of Colorado play an important role as clinical faculty of the University of Colorado School of Medicine (SOM). Your willingness and ability to provide an ambulatory office experience for medical students is a key component of the medical school curriculum.

One added benefit that our community colleagues frequently request is an easier path to speak with the faculty at the Anschutz Medical Campus regarding patient-related questions. Until recently, this has been a source of frustration for many of our non-faculty community providers. But a synchronized effort is aiming to change that within the University of Colorado Hospital, the School of Medicine and University Physicians, Inc. (UPI), the business arm of the School of Medicine faculty.

So here’s the good news…

These efforts to become better communicators include regular contact between campus representatives and physicians from around the metro area to better understand the needs of community-based physicians, improved dissemination of admission and discharge information to referring providers to facilitate better care transitions, and upgrades to the hospital’s phone system to provide straightforward connection to faculty clinicians.

There is now ONE phone number that clinical volunteer faculty can use to access SOM faculty. Whether you want to consult with one of our physicians or transfer a patient to their care, you can call 720-848-2828 and reach the University of Colorado Hospital’s Access Center. Operators are available 24 hours a day to connect you with the right physician, along with nurses in the call center with the clinical expertise to help sort out possible options for the specialty service that could best address your patient’s clinical needs.

An additional resource is the UCH Physician Relations team, who is available to help with any challenges that arise when seeking the best possible care for your patients. This could include getting reports back about your patients, scheduling patient appointments in specialty clinics and ensuring your patients are sent back to you as their primary physicians after seeing specialists at the University.

Effective communication between campus and community providers is vitally important as we all work towards our shared goal of improving our patients’ health outcomes. Please don’t hesitate to contact any of the Physician Relations team to let them know how to further improve as your partners.